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Moving to the Sound of the Beat

Moving to the Sound of the Beat

Dustin Harper always loved to dance. He had mastered all of Michael Jackson's most iconic dance moves by the time he was in 7th grade. In fact, now that he was a junior in High School, he won first or second place in both of the biannual talent shows that he had access to every year for the last four years. This was more of an accomplishment than it might have been in his parents' time, as he was competing against literal super-humans on the stage.

Having just won the most recent show, Dustin was in a good mood, and had been dancing his way from class to class to the soundtracks only he could hear for the past week straight. A few of the bolder bullies tried to make fun of him for dancing to his own beat, but he just laughed along with their jokes and kept going. There wasn't much that could bring him down from the high of enjoying a life well lived.

As he was on his way to the next class, he kept dancing, this time doing various versions of the moonwalk, at times walking backwards, and sometimes event going sideways. He was so in the vibe of the song he was listening to in his own mind that he didn't even notice that anyone who tried to walk where he had been kept slipping on a barely visible grease patch. It wasn't until he passed through one of the areas he had been through earlier on his way to his last class of the day that he noticed that something was off.

He was entirely unaffected, as he treated even the roughest surface as though he could slide across it easily, and could find purchase on even the slipperiest of surfaces. As he watched his fellow students attempting to cross the area, however, he noticed that few were able to, and most didn't even try to go across the slightly damp looking path from, electing to go around it in one way or another instead. He shrugged it off and just kept dancing his way to his last class – not much could ruin his good mood and pull him off his vibe today. He had won not only first place in the talent show, but also nearly half of the other rewards, including “Most Stylish Performance” and “Best Costume” beating even the Cosplay Club members.

He kept his mood high all the way home too, though he did subdue his dancing a bit at home to avoid running into anyone, or bothering his family in any other way. Finishing his homework before dinnertime, he looked up music videos new and old on the various video hosting platforms, looking for anything that looked interesting to add to his repertoire. After practicing a few new moves and figuring out various methods to replicate them, he worked on integrating them into his existing moves for a while before going to bed.

The next day, he went to school as he normally did, and as he was jiving to his internal soundtrack on his way to the next class, he somehow fired off some sparks from his fingers, causing the nearby bushes to smoke and sizzle a bit. Now, while the people behind him falling over and looking unsteady wasn't really enough to throw him off his groove, sparks flying from his fingertips was. And a bush nearly catching fire right in front of him definitely was enough to catch his attention.

Broke out of his internal world and thoroughly thrown off of his groove, Dustin stopped and looked around to try and figure out what happened. Everyone was giving him a wide berth, by now random people exhibiting uncontrollable and unpredictable abilities was nearly an everyday occurrence. In fact, there were assemblies and P.E. classes dedicated to how to avoid coming to harm as a result of new abilities emerging.

Thus Dustin knew his next move was either to try and hid his abilities, or to join the “special class” in P.E.. Dustin was never one to hide his talents, and he definitely saw no reason to start now, so he made his way to the councilor's office instead of his next class, with decidedly less dancing involved. He was still in a good mood, so he still did the occasional dance move on the way, but he didn't let himself be immersed in the groove as he had been earlier.

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While he had never really spent much time with the school councilors, he wasn't exactly unknown at school, and was plenty friendly, so he had at least talked to them before. He also knew quite well where to go, as he had been at the school since the beginning of his Freshman year, so he got there with no issues, and reported what happened earlier to them.

Considering that nobody had really been close enough to have been an alternate source for the strange ability manifestation, he was quickly added to the ability manifestation and exploration group, and then sent back to his class with a tardy excuse note. When P.E. came, he learned the meditation and self-exploration techniques and tried to “feel for his power center” and other new-agey nonsense sounding stuff. Nothing really came of it, and he just walked to his next class, more confused than anything.

A few classes later, his good mood returned, and on his way to his last class, he was dancing again. Nothing abnormal seemed to happen for the rest of the day, and he went through his day as normal, went to bed, and went to sleep. The next day, as he was deep in the groove, heading from one class to the next, he threw his hands out in a rather flashy move, and a full on fireworks display shot in the sky, centered on him. He almost didn't notice it, as he was seeing something similar happening in his mental music video, but the explosion was a little to real and a little too loud.

Looking up in amazement, he watched as a full on five minute fireworks display went off over his head. When it finally ended, he looked around at all the people who had gathered, shrugged his shoulders, and continued his trip to his next class. While the fireworks display had been pretty cool, random emissions of powers that weren't always being controlled were relatively normal these days, and teachers didn't excuse tardiness just cause you got caught up watching a particularly cool one.

The next time something noticeable happened around him, he was dancing again, and was deep in the vibes, barely registering his surroundings, when all the sudden, it started snowing. At first he didn't really notice anything, but it was early fall, and the lows for the day were originally around 60 degrees, and snow suddenly showing up, and not melting had quite a drastic effect on the temperature. And having the temperature suddenly drop by half was definitely enough to attract even his attention. It wasn't a blizzard, but more one of those sparkling, beautiful displays that sometimes happen in music videos or in musical movies or TV shows.

After he was broken out of his stride by the sudden cold, he looked around in amazement for a bit, before the cold started getting to him and he rushed off to his next class. All students undergoing ability manifestation had to spend a class period every day talking through every event that had happened with their assigned councilor, and that was actually where he was heading this time. Which meant that this time, what had happened was quite fresh on his mind, and he actually made some progress with his counseling session class.

On the way to his next class, he tried picturing the fog that was popular in certain music videos as he jived and vibed his way to the next class. And when he got there, he came out of his dance trance, and saw that he was surrounded by just enough fog to be atmospheric, but didn't prevent you from seeing too far, and only came up to his waist. He had manifested what he wanted to, and when he wanted to for the first time.

The day continued on without any other deviations from the norm, and the next day he tried manifesting different things on his way to each class. During manifestation practice in P.E. he even managed to pay attention to his surroundings and manifest sparks and gouts of flames. It was as if a switch was flipped, and he was just able to do whatever he wanted while dancing. Almost as though he was manifesting aspects of his internal music video.

Soon, he was dancing his way from class to class, manifesting only the musical soundtrack running through his mind as he went. Most of the time it wasn't an issue, but sometimes he caught people he passed by plugging their ears. No guarantee everyone would enjoy the same music he liked, but hey, he wasn't gonna judge them for not enjoying his musical tastes.

Before long, his magical dancing was more a matter of record than anything, not really remarked upon unless he made a nuisance of himself with it. But he didn't really care, let the man keep their lists, he just liked to dance. While others marched the the orders of the man, he would dance to his own beat.